Mistakes to avoid in the condominium accounts

Income, expenses, and cash balance that do not reconcile

The first mistake, and the most visible one to owners, is an account that does not balance: income minus expenses does not match the declared closing cash balance. This happens when a payment is recorded twice, when an owner's payment is not correctly matched to the instalment it covers, or when bank movements such as interest, fees, or internal transfers are left out of the register.

The check a property manager should always run before calling the assembly that approves the accounts is reconciling the year end bank balance against the cash balance shown in the bookkeeping register: if the two figures do not match, the accounts are not ready. AmministraPro links every payment received and every expense to its underlying bank movement and calculates the cash balance automatically, flagging discrepancies before they reach the final document.

Mixing the accrual basis and the cash basis without declaring it

A frequent conceptual mistake is blending the two accounting bases without stating which one applies: recording an expense in the year it was paid rather than the year it was incurred, or the reverse, inconsistently across line items. An elevator maintenance invoice received in December but paid in January of the following year, for example, must be allocated according to a criterion chosen in advance and applied consistently, not according to what is convenient at the time.

The law does not impose one single criterion on every building, but it does require consistency and transparency: the criterion adopted must remain the same from one year to the next and must be stated explicitly in the explanatory note, so owners can compare years without confusion. Changing criterion without explaining it is one of the most common grounds for challenging the accounts in court.

Outstanding balances not carried forward correctly to the next year

Another recurring mistake concerns outstanding balances: instalments not yet collected from owners in arrears, supplier invoices not yet paid, unspent cash reserves. If these amounts are not carried forward precisely into the following year's accounts, the new budget starts from an incorrect opening balance, and the mistake compounds year after year, becoming harder to spot each time.

AmministraPro carries forward outstanding receivables and payables automatically from one year to the next, with every owner's payment history always available.

• Reconcile the list of owners in arrears against the outstanding receivables carried forward, owner by owner.
• Verify that every invoice received but not yet paid appears among the outstanding payables.
• Do not close the year until the opening balance of the new year has been checked against the previous year's closing balance.

Missing or too generic explanatory note

Article 1130 bis requires the accounts to be accompanied by an explanatory note describing ongoing relationships and pending matters. A common mistake is presenting accounts made only of number tables, with no text explaining unusual entries, ongoing extraordinary works, or disputes open with suppliers or owners in arrears.

An effective explanatory note does not need to be long, but it must answer the questions an owner would naturally ask when reading the figures: why has this item increased, what is the status of works approved the previous year, which arrears are being recovered. Accounts without this narrative part are formally incomplete and give owners a legitimate reason to challenge them at the assembly.

Wrong or outdated apportionment tables

A last frequent mistake: applying outdated apportionment tables that were never updated after a structural change to the building, or using the wrong criterion for a specific expense, for instance apportioning by general ownership shares an expense that article 1123 of the civil code requires to be split by use, such as the elevator or centralized heating. The mistake affects every single owner and can generate complex adjustments to correct the following year.

AmministraPro manages multiple apportionment tables for the same unit, property, stairs, elevator, heating, and applies the correct one automatically to each expense line, reducing the risk of wrong apportionments and making it easier to demonstrate at the assembly how each amount was calculated.

Frequently asked questions